[11443] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: The whole CIX concept is flawed
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (James Waldrop)
Sat Apr 2 23:40:42 1994
To: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
Cc: bilse@eu.net, com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sat, 02 Apr 1994 17:53:55 EST."
<199404022253.AA19609@world.std.com>
Date: Sat, 02 Apr 1994 18:09:05 -0500
From: James Waldrop <jlw@cs.columbia.edu>
Barry Shein wrote:
>A $10K/yr fee is not enough to be considered anti-competitive. The
>mere existence of someone who cannot raise $10K is not proof to the
>contrary, we can probably find someone who can't raise $10. $100K/yr
>might be more in the range, $1M/yr I'd say certainly. But $10K/yr? I
>mean, what kind of capital are these businesses using? An outfitted PC
>costs about that much. I think what people are saying when they say
>$10K/yr is a barrier to entry is simply that they'd rather spend the
>$10K on something else, not that it's some insurmountable barrier.
Consider a small startup, selling shell accounts to people (or just
some sort of internet connectivity). They'd like to offer SLIP, but
it means laying out $10K on top of everything else...
Some friends of mine are having to lay down $6k for a T1 (that's up
front), and probably don't have the cash to also plunk down $10K
for a CIX membership. Not to mention that there *are* better things
to spend that on...
James
jlw@cs.columbia.edu
sulam@well.sf.ca.us
